If the moon had an ocean then we would think Kona airport would be the landing strip to get there. The Big Island (Hawaii Island, Hawaii) is a very young piece of land. At only 1 million years old with 5 large mountain peaks this small piece of land is one of the most diverse in the world. We feel very luck to be able to push another pin into the map on this famous island with the most active volcano in the world.
We started the day by reading a little bit of history about the Island and the culture on the plane. One of the interesting facts is that the Hawaiian alphabet has only 12 letters. All the vowels (AEIOU) and seven consonants (HKLMNPW). We confirmed this as we drove to the Hilton Waikoloa Village and found all of the names have the few letters (which is maybe why there are many sounds that repeat?).
The Big Island is the biggest of the Hawaiian chain. In fact all of the other islands would easily fit in the same space the big island takes up. Mana Loa rises over four thousand meters above sea level, but when measured from the ocean floor it is the largest mountain on earth.
There are many more interesting things to learn about this tropical island in the Pacific, but we'll take the Extremepath way of investigating the rest of the island...we'll explore it. Our plans for this week include lots of sightseeing by car, hiking, SCUBA diving, snorkeling, kayaking and whatever else we can fit into the schedule set by Carol's work. Stay tuned and we'll update as we go if we have the time.
Aloha
Photo Map for this Trip
Intro: A'awon and Kawol in Hawai'i
Day 1: North Kohala
Day 2: Volcanos National Park
The first time we were in Maui, we had a hard time with all the names, because of the small number of letters and corresponding longer names. Just be glad it's base 12 and not base 2!
Posted by: Elan Feingold | January 21, 2008 at 02:59 PM